Monthly Archives: September 2008
Some thoughts on the Crisis on Wall Street
I like to think I have a gained a modicum of wisdom since my childhood, though my wife may disagree. For starters, I’ve learned that virtually no good can come from rushing into anything. I’ve also figured out that, for any of its faults, capitalism does what it’s supposed to – it allows people to [...]
7th inning stretch?
If you haven’t heard, the Cubbies have a pretty good team this year. They’ve clinched a birth to the playoffs, and are predicted to do some damage in the playoffs. (Or wait – is that the fans that are predicted to do some damage? I’m getting ahead of myself.) Read this article from the Chicago [...]
Welcome to the Monkey House
Before anyone gets too excited about the prospect of universal healthcare insurance, we should stop to think about what this will really accomplish. First, we should acknowledge that the very poor and the old are mostly covered, and that the largest part of the uninsured really are people who expect to have little use for [...]
Diamond and Kashyap on the Current Financial Crisis
One of most viewed economics blogs is Steve Levitt’s Freakonomics New York Times blog. Levitt is the primary author of the “bestselling” non-fiction book, Freakonomics. Take a look at what Levitt’s colleagues, Doug Diamond and Anil Kashyap (all at the University of Chicago) have to say about what has gone on these last [...]
The Ike Spike
Continuing on my oil and gasoline prices theme, I thought I would mention something that is already obvious to many of you, and that is how much gasoline prices have skyrocketed, in spite of the drop of crude oil prices below the $100 mark. As I write this, on the Sunday evening after Ike hit [...]
Inflating tires and tune ups: Why we can’t conserve our way out of high gas prices
In response to the Republican tune (click here to hear the real tune, by Aaron Tippin) of “Drill Here, Drill Now,” Senator and Democratic Presidential Candidate, Burack Obama dismissed the idea of more drilling leading to lower gasoline prices, insisting that we cannot drill ourselves out of high gas prices. Instead, Obama suggests that [...]
Diminishing McValue?
In Econ 211, we often talk about the principle of diminishing marginal value. We say, that as you increase the rate of consumption, the marginal value eventually diminishes. When we are being lazy or sloppy, we often neglect that there is a time dimension in this concept. As you increase the *rate* of consumption… This [...]
Hurricane Insurance, again
A picture of the price of the Louisiana contract. The prices are the squares (right axis) and the bars are the volume (left axis). See the previous post for some details, but the basic idea is the price of the contract reflects the probability that the hurricane would make landfall in Louisiana and be at [...]